1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a garment hanger device and more particularly to a garment hanger device which will adequately maintain a garment meant for the upper body such as shirts, blouses, sweaters, jackets, or the like, as well as garments meant for the lower body, such as pants, skirts or the like, in a folded or semi-folded, and wrinkle free environment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Hangers are widely used for the storage of garments meant for the upper body. Typically, hangers consists of a hook portion, adapted to engage a closet bar or the like, and a triangular shape lower portion which is designed to receive the shoulders of the garment. Though this traditional hanger can maintain standard clothing, this hanger does not provide support for the body of the garment nor the sleeves. The flaw in this arrangement will enable the body and sleeves to dangle downwardly. The garment may sag and cause the body and sleeves to become wrinkled and lose its shape while hung. Accordingly, efforts have been made to provide for an adequate hanger device which will efficiently hang a garment or the like in a hung and stored position while still rendering the garment to maintain its original shape.
Such a device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,669,642 issued to Nicholas. Nicholas discloses a hanger that is capable of being folded and reusable. This hanger disclosed in Nicholas includes a shirt body frame that is generally rectangular in shape. A pair of wings are hingedly secured to the outer ends of the shirt body frame while a tail panel is pivotally secured to a lower end of the shirt body frame. Though this hanger does provide a means of folding the shirt while in a hung position, this hanger fails to provide a means of effectively extending the suspension area while hung to prevent sagging and wrinkling, or of maintaining the sleeves in a fixed and folded position once the wings are tucked over. This design and configuration also fails to provide an overall taut positioning of the garments, thus allowing for many wrinkled areas. Additionally, the use of the hinged portion provides an opportunity for the clothing to get caught and tear, inherently ruining the garment.
As such, none of these previous efforts provide the benefits intended with the present invention, such as providing the garment to be hung in a fixed and wrinkle free position. Additionally, prior techniques do not suggest the present inventive combination of component elements as disclosed and claimed herein. The present invention achieves its intended purposes, objectives and advantages over the prior art device through a new, useful and unobvious combination of component elements, which is simple to use, with the utilization of a minimum number of functioning parts, at a reasonable cost to manufacture, assemble, test and by employing only readily available material.